Social Media

Create Your Own Branded Mobile Video Broadcast with Ustream

The live streaming service Ustream has been busy over the past few months. In January, the company launched a mobile version of their platform on Nokia phones and the iPhone. In February, they launched Watershed, a private label business version of their player with strong customization features. Today, Ustream launched another product: the mobile version of Watershed.

For those unfamiliar with Watershed, it is the "white-label" version of Ustream - it provides businesses, institutions, and even universities a personalized, branded version of Ustream. It also provides detailed traffic and viewer analytics. The mobile version adds on to this functionality by allowing for live streams via Nokia N95 and S60 phones (sorry, no iPhone version yet).

Watershed mobile includes Twitter integration and chat, but also has two other useful features: GPS and Yes or No Polling. Watershed mobile is GPS-enabled, meaning that viewers can know where you are. Yes or No Polling allows broadcasters can quickly and easily gauge their audience for feedback and opinions.

According to Ustream, one of the major points of differentiation between Watershed mobile and competing streaming applications is its low latency - it only takes 1-3 seconds for a live mobile stream to reach a computer. If true, that is some serious technological innovation that makes interacting with an audience via mobile practical.

Ustream also announced several major customers, including Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Sling, as well as Duke University and the University of California, Berkeley. Some, like Sun, are already broadcasting events with Watershed.

Personally, I still look forward to the day when reporters use their mobile phones to report the news. For now, the competition should take notice of Ustream's entrance into the mobile video space. Interactivity has always been a strong point of the Ustream platform, and it seems intent on bringing that advantage to business and mobile broadcasting.

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